


Only Sleeping

by Rethira



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Multi, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-25
Updated: 2012-05-25
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rethira/pseuds/Rethira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Altina greets him, and Zelgius pulls him to his feet and they say <i>Welcome home</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Sleeping

**Author's Note:**

> Written (a while ago) for Raphiael, from the prompt 'drowning.'

On the first day of the thirty-third year, Lehran drowns himself.

He wakes up to Deghinsea’s blank face, and a terse warning not to scare the dragons like that again.

Lehran tries again on the twenty-sixth day of the forty-seventh year.

This time, he is aware as he is dragged from the river, and Deghinsea posts guards around him night and day so he doesn’t try again.

But the guards grow lax, and by the time the eighty-ninth day of the sixty-second year rolls around, they are lax enough for Lehran to drown himself for the third time.

He wakes up a week later, and even Deghinsea is surprised by it. _We thought you dead_ , he doesn’t say, and Lehran’s absence is passed off as a sudden fever after his dip in the river.

On the one hundredth and twenty-ninth day of the ninetieth year, Lehran drowns himself again.

Deghinsea’s only reaction this time is to say that at least drowning leaves him whole; he had not enjoyed watching as Lehran’s body knitted itself back together after he had dropped himself from a cliff.

Lehran does not try to kill himself again for nearly three hundred years, too caught up in his immortality and Deghinsea’s young children to bother with such things.

But the anniversary of her death hits him particularly hard in the three hundredth and eighty-fifth year, and so he drowns himself again.

He sleeps for a fortnight, and Deghinsea has to tell Rajaion and Almedha that Lehran is just ill, and he will be better soon.

Lehran drowns himself again and again and again in the years that follow, until Rajaion and Almedha talk about his mysterious illness in whispers, and the court seems to believe he will soon die.

But Lehran does not die, and he hears whispers from Begnion, of slaves and terrible, terrible things.

One day, it becomes too much and Lehran leaves. There is no time for death now, he must act. He must save his brothers and sisters where Deghinsea will not.

Sephiran does not taste the sweet release of drowning in all the time he exists. He drowns in a different way; he drowns in the adoration Zelgius gives him, and finds that while Zelgius breathes and loves him so, he cannot choose to sleep.

His goddess wakes and she says _I thank you my loyal servant_. She tells him that his life could end now, if he so desired, for now that she was awake, she had little need of him.

Sephiran takes that bitter knowledge, and he uses it to fuel him as his beautiful descendents ascend the tower.

Yune needs him, she says. And so his life is restored, and death will not come to claim him. For Zelgius, death has long since come, and once his goddess has left, Sephiran leaves the tower and drowns himself.

He wakes up as Lehran again, and the herons agree not to tell anyone of his death and revival.

They come to check on him from time to time, and often they find him sleeping in the river. They always wake him, take him from the sleep he needs so badly.

When Ashunera returns, they sing together. He has his voice back, and Lehran feels almost whole again.

_It is time, Lehran_ , she says. _It is time to go and join them._

She cradles him as he drowns for the final time, and when he wakes up it is not to her face, or to any face of someone yet living; Altina greets him, and Zelgius pulls him to his feet and they say _Welcome home_.


End file.
